


The Non-Pursuit of Happiness

by busaikko



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Episode: s10e20 Unending, F/M, M/M, Multi, Other, POV Bisexual Character, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-28
Updated: 2011-06-28
Packaged: 2017-10-20 19:47:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/busaikko/pseuds/busaikko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: <i>Cameron Mitchell. Cam had absolutely no plans to come out as bisexual to his team. Especially while trapped on a ship with them for what could be forever. But it's hard to keep a secret in that kind of situation.</i> [10.20 Unending: Life, liberty, and the (non-)pursuit of happiness on board the Odyssey.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Non-Pursuit of Happiness

**Author's Note:**

> Warning(s): claustrophobia, depression, suicidal thoughts

They'd been trapped on board the _Odyssey_ for a couple of weeks, and Cam was working in the hydroponics garden with Teal'c. Cam and Landry were the only two who knew the first thing about growing plants for food, but Teal'c learned quickly and was good at it. Vala had enthusiastically over-fed her plants trying to get them to grow faster, and Daniel and Sam meant well, but they got distracted.

Cam wondered if it was because Teal'c was a father and was applying those nurturing skills, but no way in hell was he going to ask. Not when it was looking more and more likely that they were all going to die of old age trapped in their own bubble of time, without ever seeing their families again.

Teal'c's hands were patient and precise, deliberate. He had depths, Cam thought, the kind that made him feel like he was stuck splashing in the shallow kiddie-pool of life.

"Are you doing well?" Teal'c asked, studying the nutrient monitor for the tomatoes. He frowned, and then made a quick note on the datapad. "You do not seem to be adjusting," he added, equal parts reluctance and blunt honesty.

Cam sucked in a deep breath and blew it out. "Not like I _want_ to adjust," he said, trying not to take his irritation out on Teal'c, who only wanted to help. "Fuck. Just. . . the walls close in. Wouldn't mind breathing real air. Running on grass for miles."

Teal'c nodded as if he knew this. Maybe it showed in the way Cam worked his frustrations out in sparring. "You miss your partner."

Adrenaline fear hit Cam's body like a hammer; he wasn't used to constantly being on edge any more, and his hands shook with the force of it, nearly doing damage to the spinach. "Don't know what you're talking about."

"I see." Cam felt Teal'c's withdrawal with relief, and then was angry at himself. "Should you wish to talk. . . ."

"I appreciate it," Cam said, sincere too late for it to count. "Just. . . it's the way things have to be."

"As you say," Teal'c agreed, only later on when Cam replayed the conversation, he wondered if Teal'c wasn't very politely calling him an idiot.

He kind of figured he'd be hearing from Sam after that; she and Teal'c did a lot of meditating together and had long philosophical talks. Lots of sincere courtesy and mutual respect between those two, Cam knew. He kind of wished he didn't have such a physical relationship with the world, but he couldn't sit still for beans, and meditation made him sick of himself.

Sam came by his room a week or so later, wearing jeans and a pink flannel shirt. Vala was becoming quite the expert with the matter converter, able to fabricate almost anything and make it look _real_. Cam figured Sam was trying to put him at ease, hit his down-home button. It kind of worked, except looking at her rolled-up sleeves made him feel uncomfortable. The stupid climate-controlled air always made him feel too hot, or too cold, or dry, or somehow fundamentally not right. He'd been cold right down to his bones, but seeing Sam and her flannel he started to get hot at the back of his neck. He thought about taking off his jacket, but decided against it.

"Teal'c thinks you're depressed," Sam said, dropping onto Cam's bed and stretching out, kicking her shoes onto the floor. "He thought maybe you wanted to hear me talk about the nature of space and time again."

"Please God don't," Cam said, as earnestly as he possibly could, not even caring if it came out insulting. "Thinking about it just winds me up."

Sam shrugged. "You know that on the outside, hardly any time's passed at all, and even if we're here for ten years, or twenty --"

Cam slid out of his chair dramatically and sprawled on the floor like his bones had turned to jell-o. "Now I'm _really_ depressed." He hoped he looked spectacularly pathetic.

Sam laughed at him. "I'm just saying, once we're out of here, it'll be like we were never gone."

"Except we'll be that much older," Cam said. "And we'll have wasted X number of years getting used to being alone."

"Yeah," Sam said, and her face wrinkled up in a look of acute sisterly concern. "Teal'c said you miss your girlfriend."

Cam sighed. He was pretty sure Teal'c hadn't used the word _girlfriend_ \-- Teal'c had a very high degree of precise obfuscation in his language – but that was what Sam had heard. "Teal'c's pretty damn bored, too, you know. He just hides it better."

"I didn't know you were seeing anyone," Sam said, playing with her shirt buttons. She sounded a little hurt. "You could have told me. I might have been a little nicer."

Cam pulled his knees up and dropped his hand over his face. Through his splayed fingers, he said, "Yeah, _no_ , I couldn't have _told_ you. Didn't tell Teal'c either," he added, keeping the emphasis on the key word, there. "He just figures those things out. Comes of learning about culture through network television."

Cam couldn't recall the last time he caught Sam by surprise, but her face was gratifying, her eyes going big and her mouth practically dropping open. "Really? I mean. . . really?" She waved a hand to show that she didn't mean for him to answer that. "But you date girls."

"Cause I like girls." Cam waited a beat. "Too."

"Huh," Sam said, and gave him a look.

"I keep my personal life separate," Cam said. "As much as humanly possible. The SGC's got the gossip mill of a teeny little town. And the righteousness to go with it. Just say no, you know?"

Sam laughed, her expression darker, harder. "I've been there longer than you, so, yeah. I get that."

Cam got up and dug out the last of his real Earth food, half a pack of stale Twizzlers. He gave Sam two, and helped himself to one.

"So, anyone I know?" Sam asked. Cam shook his head, and Sam gave him a fake Twizzler-red pout. "No, he isn't, or no, you're not telling?"

"Learn to live with the mystery," Cam said, light and easy, and asked Sam to explain again the thing about how the matter converter worked.

Vala figured it out by blunt force, piecing together all of Cam's irritated responses to her bored flirtations until she was able to ask, with genuine hurt, "So it's just me you don't like, then."

Cam had to bring her back to his quarters for Twizzler therapy and say he wasn't going to sleep with anyone on his team, period, he had a line and that was where it was drawn.

"I'm also not real comfortable with Jackson turning you down and you looking to me to scratch the itch," Cam said, trying to make it sound as un-hurtful as possible. Vala's face still pinched. "Come on. You know and I know, if you and me ever did, he'd write you off permanently. And I think you're getting to him," he added, exaggerating the truth just a bit. "Jackson's looking for sincerity and commitment. Less lingerie's better."

"I am quite used to loneliness, and being alone," Vala said, weighing each word with devastating precision. "But if I imagine every day of the rest of my life going by untouched, I think I'd be better off killing myself now. At least this time I _can_."

Cam wasn't so delusional that he didn't know his fantasies of powering up one of the 302s and trying to fly out to freedom weren't the same thing.

"Come here," he said, sitting down on the bed and patting the spot next to him. "Touching I can do."

The hug turned into the both of them curled on the bed, tucked into each other, relaxing into the rhythms of heartbeats and breaths until suddenly Cam's eyes snapped open and he realized he'd just taken a nap.

He ended up sleeping – just sleeping – with Vala pretty damn often, enough that she wandered in and out of his room looking for bits of clothing and perturbed Daniel by referring to Cam as her bear.

"I'm not bothered at all that you're into that scene," Daniel said, with a bit of a smirk, when Cam finally confronted him about his increasingly bitchy attitude.

"She means teddy bear," Cam snapped. "Because we're all scared and lonely and fucked up but not all of us can lose ourselves in our own heads." He tried to glare in a way that suggested Daniel was being an ass. "We have sleep-overs. We're not fucking."

Daniel coughed. "Um. I don't actually care?"

" _Vala_ cares." Cam crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. "You know she likes you."

That got him a derisive snort. "It's too bad you're gay, because really, you sleeping with Vala, that would make my life a _hell_ of a lot easier."

Cam's thoughts went white like a television with reception suddenly knocked out, a blur of emotions sweeping up from where they'd been tamped down, all of them feeling like anger. He didn't remember walking out, just the deep-down knowledge that he couldn't afford to punch Daniel in the face. He came back to himself at the doors to the 302 bay, hands pressing flat against the cold metal as he tried to catch his breath. He'd been running again, he realized; his shirt was stuck to his back with sweat, and his face was fever-hot.

No matter what Sam said about the relative nature of time, fact was Cam was watching himself go through the damn stages of grief thing, yo-yoing between denial and anger and depression. He didn't know if he'd ever reach acceptance; the best he could hope for most mornings was to not snap at Sam for getting them into this mess or at Landry for not letting them take risks, even though if they'd all just have died at least there'd be closure. He guessed.

He breathed himself down, lowered his hands when he was reasonably sure they were steady, and went through the doors to go take apart the engine of another one of his planes. Landry had him keeping the whole damn ship in perfect order; Cam was getting intimate with every wire, crystal, vent, and access panel, and had the bloody thankless job of writing user manuals for everything he learned. Working on the 302s was the closest Cam got to having a hobby. Hours after talking with Daniel, Cam was covered in grease and elbow-deep in alien-derived tech, hoarding his own little bit of hard-earned Zen.

He kind of eased off on sleeping with Vala after that, and was glad when Daniel finally pulled his head out of his ass and realized Vala was a good person, with good intentions at heart. Half a year or so on, Daniel even let Vala ask Cam to join them for a threesome, a few times, which was. . . interesting. Cam hadn't known Daniel was bi, too. Vala seemed to think it gave them common ground, except that Daniel talked about his sexual orientation with enough jargon to kill any hard-on. Cam wondered what it must be like to have a brain like that, capable of overthinking physical pleasure. He'd never actually thought that much about who rang his bell or why, just knew that it happened and if it was a girl he was safe, if it was a guy he had to think about whether he was worth all the potential problems.

Vala was sexually adventurous and Daniel gave good head, but there was no way Cam was going to ask Daniel to fuck him, and at the end of a night Vala's sleepy kisses were all for Daniel, and Cam generally let himself out.

Teal'c caught him a couple of times, doing the walk of shame back to his own room, stinking of sex, and always asked Cam very politely about anything except him and Daniel and Vala.

"So, you disapprove," Cam asked point-blank once. Teal'c shrugged.

"I understand your options are limited," Teal'c said. "I hear," and Cam figured he meant from Sam, because Teal'c and Landry weren't very gossipy together, "Vala wishes to have children."

"Oh, hell," Cam said. Normally, he liked kids, but under the circumstances....

"I am not sure that would be wise," Teal'c said. "Sam and I often discuss what will happen when we leave this temporal bubble. Whether we will still carry the years we've gained, or revert to our former ages. Whether we'll retain all the knowledge of our studies."

"If a baby would disappear like a soap bubble," Cam cut in, feeling sick. "What does Sam think?"

Teal'c tipped his head, a diplomatic gesture of sympathy, or at least the acknowledgment of an observation. "How can anything be said, when the truth is not known? Perhaps the time we have now will be all that we have. Perhaps it is wise to move on," he added, and wished Cam a good night.

Cam wanted to say that he hadn't moved on, he wasn't accepting that he was trapped here forever, he woke up every morning and was only able to get out of bed because he still believed – had to believe – that there was a hope of freedom. He wanted to say, yeah, he was being unfaithful and breaking vows and promises and just praying that he'd be forgiven once he was out of this mess, but that was a choice he was making. Better to cheat with his body than lose his mind, right?

Right.

Hell, sometimes he wasn't even sure if he was still in love, which made him feel all hollowed out inside. He forgot things, little pieces of a relationship that had always been tentative fading with every passing day.

He thought about this more than was probably healthy, and the next couple of times he was asked he turned down Daniel, and then Vala, and then they didn't ask him again.

He figured that was for the best.

He had his weekly chess game with Landry on his social calendar, and he kept track of holidays and birthdays, and he grew the damn vegetables and even learned enough about cooking to volunteer for all the weekend meals. His days were chopped into blocks of time arranged around his work on maintenance and tedious documentation and banging his head against the database, which wasn't half so easy to use as Google.

He ran ten to twenty miles of corridors and stairs each day and sparred with Teal'c, practicing Sodan techniques and Jaffa martial arts and some of the stuff he and Teal'c had learned from Ronon Dex and Teyla Emmagan, or occasionally good old karate kata. He jerked off every other day or so; it helped him get to sleep.

As long as he took care of his body, he figured, he wouldn't go out of his mind.

He was amazed when the first year anniversary of being stuck out of time passed and he realized he was doing okay. Maybe not happy, especially when he thought too much about the situation, but _at least he had his health_.

He told Landry this one night over the chessboard. Landry eyed him and then said, "Well, son, I guess you've got a little too much time on your hands."

So Landry had Cam take lessons in advanced officer torture – whoops, he meant training – complete with pop quizzes and exams.

That, combined with all the other never-ending and thankless work, which every day he cursed as being ridiculous for someone without the proper qualifications, took the next eight years.

Cam figured Landry had a Mr. Miyagi thing going, because when Cam'd finally got everything shipshape and working efficiently he knew enough for a royal flush of PhDs. He'd had to learn to read Ancient and Asgard and a couple of programming languages in both of those, not to mention how to do advanced math in base eight, as well as memorize a whole bunch of military history and theory and philosophy. He had calluses and welding burns and a strong sense of accomplishment.

When Landry finished busting Cam's balls he turned right around and told Cam to get Vala and Teal'c competent with the work and technology, so Sam didn't need to be called away from inventing even more new kinds of physics just to deal with water pumps or oxygen levels. Thing was, Cam was right under Landry in terms of chain-of-command and had nothing to say but _yes, sir_ , while Vala and Teal'c were free agents; Cam had to make all kinds of promises and deals before they'd stoop to stuff like calibrating the ambient temperature sensor modules. Vala was very fond of foot massages.

But once Cam reached a kind of accomplishment plateau with regards to his hundred artificial crises, he looked around and realized that somehow a whole little micro-culture had built up around him. Sam had learned to play the cello, and Teal'c matter-converted himself up an instrument like a double-barreled flute to accompany her. Daniel and Landry maintained the ship's library of books and videos and ran their own twisted version of a discussion club, where Daniel talked for twenty minutes and used words like _epistemological_ in discussing books by Nora Roberts, and Landry waited til he was done before cutting him down with a flat, "That's a load of hooey, son." Cam and Vala spent a good two weeks turning the deserted Level 3 living quarters corridor into a bowling alley, complete with trophies.

Unbearable days bled together in a pattern of years, and Cam hated that he'd found ways to survive. He hadn't wanted to know that he could tolerate prison this long.

"So, you and -- " Cam said to Vala one night, helping her in the galley because she had some wild ideas about food, and they didn't ever want a repeat of the chocolate-glazed broccoli. Vala gave him a wide-eyed stare, half-turning, which put Cam in the line of fire of a knife Teal'c kept sharp enough to split hairs. He stepped to the side and gestured for her to point it back towards the greens. "You and Jackson, you've really got quite a. . . thing."

"A thing," Vala said thoughtfully, and set the knife down before crossing her arms. Her chin was at a challenging angle. "I suppose you didn't think I was capable of serious commitment."

"Hey, that's not what I was thinking at all," Cam protested. It was the truth. Vala didn't surprise him, but Cam suspected Jackson of being married to his research. It was kind of impressive that he was capable of making room for love, or whatever. "Both of you totally deserve happiness."

"Ooh," Vala said, and her face made a very subtle shift from defensive to knowing. "I think it's sweet, you and the General."

"Boy, do you have the wrong idea about that," Cam said. Vala raised both eyebrows and gave him a wink. "No. Seriously."

"Older men," Vala said thoughtfully, and moved a pile of chopped greens into the colander, "have that certain _je ne sais quoi_ , don't you think?"

Cam refused to fall into the trap of asking if Daniel was giving Vala French lessons, but he was too teed off to think of anything else to say.

And all of a sudden Cam was looking at what he thought of as Vala's real face, not one of the masks she put up to hide behind. Her eyes were a bit sad, and her mouth was thin, and Cam couldn't help thinking of how Vala was so _alive_ in spite of every hurt life heaped on her.

"I wasn't making fun of you," Vala said carefully, as if she was afraid she'd trespassed, somehow. She picked the knife up and twirled it in the air. "So he doesn't know."

And there went the wind right out of Cam's sails. "Nothing to know because nothing's going to change one way or the other," he said. Vala looked like she had a lot to say about that. "Trust me."

"You wouldn't be such a coward if he were a woman," Vala said. Cam shrugged. She waved the knife at him. "Life is too short not to try."

Great, Cam thought but managed not to say. Just what he needed, being talked _into_ and not _out of_ a crush on his commanding officer. First time that ever happened.

He kept coming back to the idea of life being short, though, like a wave returning to shore. His brain was stuck in a kind of urgency, like all along he'd been thinking of the time before them as unending and suddenly he understood that it was, in fact, finite, the end rushing forward at him.

When Cam finally did crack, it wasn't spectacular.

He was hanging out with Landry, playing chess and talking tales from the Cold War and tips for houseplants, because every now and then Cam destroyed everything in his room, and afterward, Landry always showed up with some plant or another for him to take care of, saying it looked like Cam had too much free time on his hands again. Cam felt it was rude just to let the plants die.

Cam cracking, though, didn't involve smashing up or killing anything. He just reached out as Landry captured his queen with a rook and wrapped his hand around Landry's. The queen dropped down to the board and rolled, loud in the sudden silence.

"I'm not in the habit of making really awkward passes at my boss," Cam said, trying to play this down, kind of horrified at himself, feeling like he was watching from a great distance away. "Not where I'm going, here."

Landry pulled his hand free with a couple of not very soothing pats to the back of Cam's hand. "It's hard on all of us." He narrowed his eyes. "The rules still apply."

Cam put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. "We're going to die here. Sir. And I never," he swallowed to keep his voice under control, "planned on dying alone."

Landry's chair scraped back on the floor, but Cam didn't hear him get up. "I have a daughter your age, Colonel, and an ex-wife I was just starting to get to be friends with again. You think I don't think about them? Wonder if they'll ever understand how much I've missed them?"

"I have a boyfriend," Cam said, into his palms. "I mean, over the years I've had boyfriends, and girlfriends, but this time, him and me, everything clicked and I thought, _damn_ it, the one I want to try and make things work is someone things never will work with." He shrugged. "Figured we'd get screwed over by the Air Force, though, not this time bubble thing."

That earned him a snort. Cam was glad that he could be falling to pieces and still provide amusement.

"I knew there was someone," Landry said. "Sam let it slip years ago. Bit of creative editing in her account, though." He sighed. "Sleeping with my daughter, that would be unforgivable. But you know you're not the first gay officer I've ever worked with. I'm old, but I can handle the shock."

"Bisexual," Cam said. "Vala thinks you and I are having an affair. We could scandalize Carolyn."

Landry got up, and Cam straightened to watch him cross the room to grab a couple of mugs and a bottle of iced tea. Cam pushed the chessboard to one side of the table; the game was done, anyway. Landry poured, and gave Cam a wry look.

"It's nearly the color of good whisky," he said. "You'll have to let your imagination fill in the rest. And I very much doubt Carolyn would be scandalized. She's a modern young woman. And discreet."

Cam did a good job of not choking on his mouthful of tea, and decided that he really, _really_ didn't want to know enough to ask. Not now, most likely never.

"Excellent qualities in a doctor," Cam said, when he had coughed and got his voice in working order. He still sounded a little strangled.

Landry gave Cam a speculative look. "I'm not going to ask his name, Mitchell, but you can talk about him. When we're off duty, why, we're practically friends."

"Sure thing," Cam said, waited a beat, and then added, "Hank."

Landry shook his head, looking nearly as mellow as if he really was drinking alcohol. "That's pushing it, son," he said, and asked Cam how they'd met. After that Cam had to ask how Landry had met Carolyn's mom, and sometime during a tangential story about chickens in Vietnam that wasn't as funny if you hadn't been there, Cam fell asleep on Landry's sofa.

He woke when the lights powered up for artificial dawn, blinking in disorientation until he recognized where he was. There was a blue blanket tucked around him, and Landry was snoring loudly over on his own bed. Cam sat up, realized his shoes were missing, found them under the table, and managed to get himself together and out the door with the minimum of noisy bumping into things.

Just as he was shutting the door quietly behind him Teal'c and Sam rounded the corner on their morning constitutional, already arguing about something in that deferential academic way they had – politics, Cam realized, and shuddered a little.

Sam looked at Cam, and at the door, and back at Cam, who supposed his hair was flat on the side and his clothes were wrinkled. Cam grinned, as wide as he could manage without that first cup of matter-converted coffee.

"O-kay," Sam said, a startled smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "I guess Vala wins the bet."

"She sure does," Cam said, ruthless with his fake morning cheer. "See you all at breakfast."

"I wish you happiness," Teal'c said, with just the right amount of tension at the corner of his eyes to suggest he was holding in amusement.

"Happiness for everyone," Cam agreed, and walked past them with a bit of bounce in his step. Tonight he planned on dropping in to hear the end of the chicken story. He figured they'd known each other long enough, Landry could just deal with Cam bringing his toothbrush and pillow, and still being there in the morning.

  
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the end  
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